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Esther Bick was born in Poland and moved to Switzerland where she studied briefly with the psychologist Eugen Bleuler. She later moved to the United Kingdom and was elected a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1953.

Ignacio Matte Blanco was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, noted for his work on logic and the unconscious.

He was born in Santiago on 3 Oct 1908 and trained as a psychoanalyst in Chile and England, becoming a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1938. He moved to study in the USA two years later and became Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University. He returned to Chile in 1944, where he was instrumental in establishing the Chilean Psychoanalytic Association and was appointed as Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Psychiatric Clinic at the medical school of the University of Chile.

In 1966, he moved to Rome, Italy, where he continued to practice psychoanalysis and psychotherapy until his death on 11 Jan 1995.

Nancy Born is the pseudonym adopted by the writer of these diaries, which begin with a summary of events in her life leading up to her analysis with D W Winnicott.

She obtained a BA honours degree at Oxford University and taught for two years in a girls' boarding school near London. She then lived in Budapest for ten years, where she taught English and had her first analysis. She returned to England in 1937 and worked with D W Winnicott at Paddington Green Children's Hospital until the start of the Second World War. She was accepted in 1938 as a student for training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and later qualified as a psychoanalyst. During the war, she worked as a psychiatric social worker in a child guidance clinic in the north of England. After the war, she returned to London and entered into psychoanalytic practice, as well as returning to work at Paddington Green Children's Hospital as a psychotherapist, again working with Winnicott.

She re-entered analysis in 1946 and, following the death of her analyst, became a patient of Winnicott in 1947.

The dates of birth and death of Nancy Born are not known but she was known to be deceased when the manuscript was transferred to the archives in 1986.

John Bowlby, the son of a surgeon, was born on 26 Feb 1907. He read medicine at Cambridge University, where he developed an interest in developmental psychology. On completion of his degree at Cambridge, he studied clinical medicine and psychoanalysis at University College Hospital, London. He began practical work in this field by volunteering at the Maudseley Hospital and the London Child Guidance Clinic.

In 1937 he qualified with the British Psychoanalytical Society to work analytically with adults and in the same year began to train as a child analyst, becoming a member of the Society in 1939. By this time, he had already begun to develop his central idea that the basic cause of mental disorders could be traced to interactions between child and parent. This research was interrupted by the outbreak of war; he joined the Emergency Medical Service and then the Army Medical Corps, serving as a major and then a Lieutenant Colonel, although all the while engaging in the life of the British Psychoanalytical Society where he became Training Secretary of the in 1944. He served in the army until the end of hostilities in 1945.

In the same year he was appointed head of the Children's Department at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Because of his emphasis on the importance of family relations he renamed it the Department for Children and Parents. Whilst undertaking a study of homeless children for the World Health Organization in 1950, Bowlby first coined the term 'maternal deprivation' and argued for the damaging effects of the absence of a mother or mother-figure. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he wrote some of his most famous papers, including 'The Nature of the Child's Tie to this Mother' (1958) and 'Grief and Mourning in Infancy' (1960). He died of a stroke on the Isle of Skye in 1990.

Marjorie Brierley was born in 1893. She qualified as an associate member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1927 and as a member in 1930. She practised psychoanalysis for around 20 years and during much of this time she played an active role in the affairs of the Society. She served on many committees and made a significant contribution to the Controversial Discussions held within the society during the 1940s, as well as being a training analyst, a control analyst and lecturer. Around 1950, she moved with her husband to live in the Lake District, after which she largely withdrew from the Society. She died on 21 Apr 1984.

The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded in 1919 by Ernest Jones as a successor to the London Psychoanalytical Society, which was founded in 1913 (also by Jones) but later disbanded. The Institute of Psychoanalysis was established as the administrative arm of the Society in 1924. The BPAS was formally admitted to the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1920, when Jones was also elected president of the IPA.

Alexis Brook was born in 1920 in London. His parents were Russians who had emigrated for political reasons. He was educated at St Paul's School and decided to become a doctor. He went first to Cambridge and then underwent his clinical training at the Middlesex Hospital. He qualified in 1943.

Work with the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II led him to choose psychiatry as a career. He noted that illness rates were lower if morale amongst troops was high. Thereafter, the recurring theme of his career was the relationship between mental and physical health.

He trained as a psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and at the Napsbury Hospital near St. Albans. He then became Consultant Psychiatrist at the Cassell Hospital and this led him to specialise in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He ran seminars for GPs and sat in on GPs surgeries each week. This work demonstrated the contribution that psychotherapy might make to other medical and health professionals' areas of work.

In 1971 he became a Consultant at the Tavistock Clinic. He was later Chair of the professional committee, establishing the Tavistock Foundation to raise extra funds for training and research projects, and setting up the annual public lecture series. During his time at the Tavistock he developed ideas in the area of occupational health, working to identify the factors that contributed to high levels of stress in the individual.

In 1985 he retired from NHS work and became a consultant psychotherapist at St Mark’s Hospital, Harrow, showing the contribution a psychotherapist could make to disorders of the gut.

From 1992 Brook worked in the field of psychosomatic opthalmology. He determined that psychotherapeutic intervention could make a significant difference to the treatment of certain eye disorders. This research led to the development of the Mind's Eye Clinic and the Eye and the Mind Society.

Alexis Brook died in 2007 at the age of 87.

Marion Burgner was born on 24 Jun 1930 into a Russian Jewish immigrant family and grew up in East London. She won scholarships to grammar school and then to the University of London. She obtained an honours degree in English from Birkbeck College and later also qualified in psychology. She had a varied career, working for various organisations including the Hampstead Clinic, the Child Guidance Training Centre and the Tavistock Clinic, and involved in clinical practice, teaching and research.

Her career as a psychoanalyst began when she commenced training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1973. She qualified in 1976 and became a full member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1979. She was active within the Society, becoming a Training Analyst in 1984 and also serving on the Scientific Committee, the Public Lectures Committee, the Curriculum Committee, the Child and Adolescent Committee, the Book Club Committee and the Admissions Committee. Her work on the editorial board of the ' International Journal of Psychoanalysis' is reflected in the papers in this collection. She died on 1 Oct 1996.

Patrick Casement was born on 27th August 1935 in Woldingham, Surrey.

He was educated at Winchester, before going to Trinity College, Cambridge to study anthropology and theology. He graduated in 1959 and began to train as a probabtion officer. He qualified in 1963 and subsequently worked for Middlesex Probabtion Service.

Between 1966 and 1973, he worked as a family social worker in London's East End. He subsequently trained as a psychotherapist and then as a psychoanalyst. He became a full member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1980.

Patrick Casement is the author of four professional books, the first two of which - On Learning from the Patient (1985) and Further Learning from the Patient (1991). His third book, Learning from our Mistakes (2002) received a Gradiva award in the US for its contribution to Psychoanalysis. His last prefessional book, written after he retired, is Learning from Life (2006), which is partly autobiographical.

In 2014, Patrick Casement survived an aggressive cancer and published a lighthearted autobiography: "Growing up? A journey with laughter" (Karnac, 2015).